Toby took a last look at the endlessly roiling perspectives and followed Walmsley down the ramp. Into a dark where light sharpened into hard points like a waiting bucket of stars.
So time had done its work and his father had changed. So had Toby. Who had been right or wrong was nothing now, a dry rattle among fading facts, lost in the curve of events. The places where the esty had scarred him were firmer and he could take whatever came without clinging to the past or foreboding for the future. His steps were light and he went forward into whatever would be.
Timeline of Galactic Series
2019 A.D.Nigel Walmsley encounters the Snark, a mechanical scout.
2024 Ancient alien starship found wrecked in Marginis crater, on Earth’s moon.
2041 First signal received at Earth from Ra.
2049 First near-light-speed interstellar probes.
2060 Modified asteroid ships launched, using starship technology extracted from Marginis wreck.
2064 Lancer starship launched with Nigel Walmsley aboard.
2066 Discovery of machine intelligence Watchers.
2067 First robotic starship explorations. Swarmers and Skimmers arrive at Earth.
2076 Lancer arrives at Ra. Discovery of the “microwave-sighted” Natural society.
2077 Lancer departs Ra.
2081 Mechanicals trigger nuclear war on Earth.
2085 Starship Lancer destroyed at Pocks. Watcher ship successfully attacked, with heavy human losses.
2086 Nigel Walmsley and others escape in Watcher ship, toward Galactic Center. Humans launch robot starship vessels to take mechanical technology to Earth.
2088 Humans contain Swarmer-Skimmer invasion. Alliance with Skimmers.
2095 Heavy human losses in taking of orbital Watcher ships. Annihilation of Watcher fleet. No mechanical technology captures due to suicide protocols among Watchers.
2097 Second unsuspected generation of Swarmers emerges.
2108 First in-flight message received from Walmsley expedition: “We’re still here. Are you there?”
2111 Final clearing of Earth’s oceans.
2128 Robot vessels from Pocks arrive at Earth carrying mechanical technology. Immediate use by recovering human industries.
2175 Second mechanical-directed invasion of Earth, using targeted cometary nuclei from Oort cloud. Rebuilding of human civilization.
2302 Third mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. The Aquila Gambit begins successive novas in near-Earth stars. Beginning of Ferret Time.
2368 First mechanical attempt to make Sun go nova. Failure melts poles of Earth.
2383 Second nova attempt. Continents severely damaged.
2427 Fourth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Rebuilding of human civilization.
2593 Fifth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Diplomatic ploy thwarted.
2763 Fifty-seventh Walmsley message received: “Are you there?”
3264 First expedition launched toward Galactic Center from Earth.
4455 First appearance of fourth chimpanzee species; clear divergence from host, Homo sapiens, the third species.
FLIGHT OF HUMAN FLEET TO GALACTIC CENTER “THE BIG JUMP”
29,079 Formation of added geometries to Wedge space-time around the central black hole. Old One manipulation of local Galactic Center space-time, apparently in anticipation of further mechanical-Natural violence. Mechanical forms carry out first incursions into Old One structures.
29,694 Walmsley group arrives at Galactic Center in Watcher craft.
29,703 First human entry into Wedge. Some communication with Old Ones.
29,741 Arrival of Earth fleet expedition at Galactic Center.
29,744 Meeting of Earth expedition and Walmsley group.
30,020-The “Great Times” of human development. Unsuc-34,567 cessful search for Galactic Library. Successive conflicts with mechanicals. Development of higher layers of mechanical “sheet intelligences.” Philosophical conflicts within mechanical civilizations. Formation of mechanical artistic philosophy.
34,567-Chandelier Age. Humans protected themselves 35,812 against rising mechanical incursions. Participation of earlier humans from the Walmsley expedition. Some collaboration with Cyber organic/mechanical forms. Discovery of Galactic Library in the Wedge.
35,812-The “Hunker Down.” Exodus from the Chandeliers 37,483 to many planets within 80 light-years of Absolute Center. Includes High Arcology Era, Late Arcology Era, and High Citadel Age as human societies contract under Darwinnowing effects of mechanical competition.
37,518 Fall of Family Bishop Citadel on Snowglade, termed the “Calamity.”
37,524 Escape of Family Bishop from Snowglade in ancient human vessel. Clandestine oversight of this band by Mantis level mechanicals.
37,529 Surviving Bishops reach nearest star, encounter Cybers. Defeat local mechanicals. Adopt some human refugees.
37,530 Bishops leave, escorted by Cybers and cosmic string.
37,536 Bishops reach Absolute Center, enter Wedge.
37,538 Temporal sequences become stocastically ordered. Release of Trigger Codes into mechanical minds. Death of most mechanical forms. Intervention of Highers to rectify damage done by excessive mechanical expansion.
Preservation of several human varieties. Archiving of early forms in several deeply embedded representations.
Beginning of cooperation between Higher mechanically-based forms and organic (“Natural”) forms. Decision to address the larger problems of all lifeforms by Syntony, in collaboration with aspects of lower forms.
Beginning of mature phase of self-organized forms.
END OF PREAMBLE. LATER EVENTS CANNOT BE THUS REPRESENTED.
About the Author
GREGORY BENFORD is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to science. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including two Nebula Awards, one John W. Campbell Award, and one British SF Award. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.
More Gregory Benford!
Please turn this page for a preview of
The Sunborn
Available wherever books are sold.
1. Firm, friendly, positive
Julia turned her best side toward the camera, a three-quarter shot, and spread her arms. Okay, maybe a bit theatrical, but she had the backdrop for it.
“Welcome to Earth on Mars!” She always opened firm, friendly, positive. She swept an arm around, taking in the stubby trees with their odd purple-green leaves, the raked mounds barely sprouting brownish-green patches, and above it all, the shiny curve of the dome, a hundred meters high. Beyond the dome’s ultraviolet screening hung the dark of space. The somber cap was always there, reminding them of how little atmosphere shielded them.
“We showed you the inflation of the big dome a month ago, the planting of trees right after—now we have grass.”
Not any breed of grass you’ve ever seen before, though; it’s a genetically modified plant more like a dwarf bamboo, and technically bamboo is a grass, just a really stiff one, so . . .
“It’ll be a while before we can play football on it, true. We’re pretty sure nothing like grass ever grew on the surface of ancient Mars even back in the warm and wet period. So this prickly little fuzz”—she stooped to stroke it—“is a first. It’ll help along the big job that the microbes are doing down in the ground already—breaking up the regolith, making it into real soil.”
Was she sounding strained already? It was getting harder to strike the right level of enthusiasm in her weekly broadcast to Earthside. She could barely remember the days decades before, when she had broadcast several times a day, sometimes from this same spot. But then, they had been breaking new ground nearly every day. And betting pools on Earth gave new odds every time they went out in the ro
ver on whether they’d come back alive. Usually about 50/50. The good ol’ days.
She smiled, strolling to her right as Viktor panned the camera. She had to remember her marks and turns, and to keep out of camera view the crowd of camp staff watching nearby.
Viktor called, “Cut, got sun reflecting in the lens.”
“Whew! Good. Let me memorize a few lines . . .”
She was glad for the break. It was getting harder to sound perky. The Consortium people had been grousing about that lately. But then, they had done so periodically, over the two decades she and Viktor had been doing their little shows. Media mavens had some respect for The Mars Couple (the title of the Broadway musical about them), but the long shadow of the Consortium, which had backed the 2018 First Landing (the movie title), wanted to keep them on the air for the worldwide subscriber base—and always pumping the numbers higher, of course. Axelrod, still the head of the Consortium, The Man Who Sold Mars (the miniseries title), and now probably the wealthiest man in the solar system, played diplomat between them and the execs Earthside. Exploration? Discovery—yes, they still got to do some. But a safari that turned up nothing new—like the Olympus Mons fiasco—could drive down Consortium shares, send heads rolling at high corporate levels, and make headlines. So she and Viktor tried not to think too much about the eternal media issues. It never really helped.
Viktor was fiddling, changing the camera angle, and here came Andy Lang, trotting over with his studied grin. “Julia, got an idea for a last shot.”
“What is it?” She looked beyond him and saw the two arm wings Andy had brought from Earth the year before, bright blue monolayer on a carbon strut. “Oh—well, look, we’ve done your flying stunt three times already.”
“I’m thinking just a closing shot.” He gestured up to the top of the dome, over a hundred meters above. “I come off the top platform, swing around the eucalyptus clump, into Viktor’s field of view—after you do your last line.”
“Ummm.” She had to admit they had no good finishing image, and Earthside was always carping about that. “You can do it?”
“Been practicing. I’ve got the timing down.” He was a big, muscular guy, an engineering wizard who had improved their geothermal system enormously. And a looker. Axelrod made sure to send them lookers. After all, thousands volunteered to work here every year. Why take the ugly ones when the worldwide audience liked eye candy?
Julia looked up at the ledge platform near the dome peak. His earlier flights had flown around the dome’s outer curve, pleasantly graceful. The eucalyptus stand at the dome’s center was her pet project. She insisted on some blue gum trees from her Australian home, the forests north of Adelaide. Earthside dutifully responded with a funded contest among plant biologists to find a eucalyptus that could withstand the sleeting ultraviolet here. Of course the dome helped a lot; chemists had developed a miracle polymer that could billow into a broad dome, holding in nearly a full Earth atmosphere, and yet also subtract a lot of the UV from sunlight—all without editing away the middle spectrum needed for plant growth.
The blue gums were a darker hue, but they grew rapidly in the Martian regolith. Of course she had to prepare the soil—joyful days spent spading in the humus they had processed from their own wastes. The French called it eau de fumier or spirit of manure and chronicled every centimeter of blue gum growth. She’d sprouted the seeds and nurtured the tiny seedlings fiercely. Once planted, their white flanks had grown astonishingly fast. Their leaves hung down, minimizing their exposure to the residual hard ultraviolet that got through the dome’s filtering skin. But their trunks were spindly, with odd limbs sticking out like awkward elbows—yet more evidence that bringing life to Mars was not going to be easy.
She considered Andy’s idea. Andy was a media hit with the ladies Earthside, if perhaps a bit of a camera hog. She had been giving him all the air time he wanted lately, glad to offload the work. “Okay, get on up there.”
She checked the timing with Viktor while Andy shimmied up the climbing rope to the peak of the dome and its platform, the big arm wings strapped to his back making him look like a gigantic moth. They moved location so that Andy would be shielded from Viktor’s view, until he came around the clump of whitebark eucalyptus trunks as Viktor panned upward from her concluding shot.
In a few minutes more they were ready to go. Julia wondered if she could ease out of this job altogether, letting Andy the Hunk take most of it. She made a mental note to tactfully broach the subject with Axelrod.
“Positions!” Viktor called. Andy nodded from the platform, wings in place. “On,” Viktor said.
Without thinking about it Julia hit the same marker where she had left off and started. “You can’t imagine how thrilling it is to walk on Martian grass, without a space suit, breathing air that smells . . . well, I won’t lie, still pretty dusty. But better, yes. To think that we used to test the rocks here for signs of water deposition! Once the raw frontier, now a park. Progress.”
Of course the hard part was turning regolith rocks and sand into topsoil, but that’s booooring, yes. Earthside had developed some fierce strains of bacteria that could break down all comers—old running shoes, hardbound books, insulation, packing buffers—into rich black loam almost as you watched.
She ducked as a white shape hurtled by, narrowly missing her head. “Chicken alert!” she said lightly, gesturing toward it with her head. It squawked and flapped, turning like a feathered blimp with wings. “Who would have thought chickens could have so much fun up here, in the low gravity? They find it far easier to fly here than on Earth. Of course we brought them here so we could have fresh eggs, and they do lay, so we predicted that part correctly. But we don’t always know everything that’s going to happen in a biological experiment. This is the Mars version of the chicken and egg problem.”
Viktor smiled dutifully; they’d shared this little joke before. The Earthside producer would more probably wince. Okay, back to the script.
She waved a hand to her right and Viktor followed the gesture with the camera, bringing in the view of the slopes and hills in the distance, beyond the green lances of the eucalyptus limbs. The slopes were still rusty red in the afternoon light, of course, far beyond the curved dome that sloped down to its curved tie-down wall eighty meters away. They stood out nicely with the green eucalyptus foreground. The other trees—ranging from drought and cold-resistent shrubs from Tasmania, to hearty high-altitude species— almost made a convincing forest. The “grass” was really a mixture of mosses, lichens and small tundra species, too. A big favorite of the staff was vegetable sheep, soft, pale clumps from New Zealand’s high country. Convincing to the visual audience—a golf course on Mars!—but also able to survive a cold Martian night and even a sudden pressure drop. The toughest stuff from Earth, made still more rugged with bioengineering.
Axelrod had insisted on the visuals. Make it look Earthy, yes. She had worked for years to make the inflated domes support life and there was still plenty to do. Making the raw regolith swarm with microbes to build soil, coaxing lichens onto the boulders used to help anchor the dome floors in place, being sure the roots of the first shrubs could survive the cold and prickly alkaline dirt. Years, yes, grubbing and figuring and trying everything she could muster. For a beginning.
Pay attention! You’re on camera, and Viktor hates to reshoot.
“Ah, one of my faves . . .” She altered course to pass by a baobab—a tall, fat, tubular tree from western Australia, with only a few thin spidery limbs sprouting from its top, like a nearly bald man. Early settlers had used them to store food, take shelter, even as jail cells. On Mars they grew spectacularly fast, like eucalyptus, and nobody knew why. Aussie plants generally did better here, from the early greenhouse days of the first landing, onward. Maybe, the biologist in her said, this came from the low-energy biology of Australia. The continent had skated across the Pacific, its mountains getting worn down, minerals depleted, rainfall lessening, and life had been forced to adapt.
A hundred million years of life getting by with less and less . . . much like Mars.
“For those of you who’ve loyally stuck with us through these—wow, twenty-two years!—I say thanks. Sometimes I think that this is all a dream, and days like this prove it. Grass on Mars! Or”—she grinned, tilting her head up a bit to let the filtered sunlight play on her still dark hair, using the only line she had prepared for this ’cast—“another way to say it, I started out with nothing and still have most of it left. Out there—in wild Mars.”
Not that this little patch is so domesticated. It’s how we find out if raw regolith can become true soil, and what will grow well here.
“Already there are environmental groups trying to preserve original, ancient Mars from us invaders.” She chuckled. “If Mars were just bare stone and dust, I’d laugh—I never did believe that rocks have rights. But since there’s life here, they have a point.”
This was just editorial patter, of course, while Viktor followed her on the walk toward the fountain. It tinkled and splashed in the foreground while she approached, Viktor shooting from behind her, so the camera looked through the trees, on through the clear dome walls to the dusty red landscape beyond. “I like to gaze out, so that I can imagine what Mars was like in its early days, a hospitable planet.” She turned, spread her hands in self mockery. “Okay, we now know from fossils that there were no really big trees—nothing larger than a bush, in fact. But I can dream . . .”
She smiled and tried to not make it look calculated. After a quarter century of peering into camera snouts, she had some media savvy. Still, she and Viktor thought in terms of, If we do this, people will like it. That had been a steadier guide through the decades than taking the advice about exploring Mars from the Earthside media execs of the Consortium, whose sole idea was, If we do this, we’ll maximize our global audience share, get ideas for new product lines, and/or optimize near-term profitability.
Furious Gulf Page 33